Authorities were also forced to delay planned mass funerals for many of those killed and officials said the air force was unable to fly helicopters to the temple town of Badrinath to rescue 5,000 pilgrims still stuck there.

'Decomposing bodies'

But officials have said that they need to get to the affected areas urgently as time is running out for survivors.

"I just need two to three days of good weather and I can get everyone out," Air Commodore Rajesh Issar, who heads Operation Rahat (Relief), said.

Police say lots of bodies are piled up around the temple in Kedarnath and many of them have begun decomposing, the BBC's Sanjoy Majumder reports from Dehradun.

Many of them remain unidentified so they are being photographed and DNA samples are being taken and preserved for the families of those still missing, our correspondent adds.

Distraught relatives clutching photographs of missing family members have been waiting for days outside Dehradun airport hoping for news.

So extensive is the damage that, even a week after the floods and landslides, there is still no clarity on the true number of people missing or dead.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the situation as "distressing" and announced a 10bn rupee ($170m; £127m) aid package for Uttarakhand.

Every summer, hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus make a pilgrimage known as the Char Dham Yatra to four temple towns in Uttarakhand.